Awareness program works to break down stereotypes
By Heather Milo
Acorn staff writer

HEATHER O'QUINN/T.O.A. SHARING STORIES-During the assembly, Redwood students display their slogan, "Imagine Pure Respect," for the Abilities Awareness program. Below, Mark Chulack demonstrates to students one of the attachments for his prosthetic arm.

Redwood Middle School students were given a new perspective on people living with disability last week during the school’s second annual Abilities Awareness Week, sponsored by the PTSA.

In an effort to keep up the "Redwood Respect Zone" and foster understanding between kids of varying abilities, Abilities Awareness Week was created by parent Keri Bowers, founder of the program, Pause-4-Kids.

Bowers said someone she loves suffers with autism. Her dream has been to help lessen the discrimination and prejudice she witnessed that person endure because of that disability.

"Ultimately, we all want acceptance," she said. Last year she was told that middle school students were too self-involved for such a program as Abilities Awareness, and said she’ proud that this year’s Redwood’s kids have helped prove that statement incorrect.

The PTSA event planning committee for this year included parents Care Butler, Cheryl Pearson, Shari Ferezy and Maria Lambert. This year, the committee presented a school assembly and activity tables to only sixth grade students.

Activity tables introduced the students to demonstrations such as the binocular walk, which showed students what it feels like to be visually impaired. Walking around looking through binoculars the wrong way demonstrates how it can seem almost impossible to do things like get on a down escalator.

This week, seventh and eighth grades will compete in Paralympics, with games such as beeper baseball and beeper soccer, where blind players listen for an electronic noise put out by ball in order to hit it. Wheelchair basketball will also be an option. Lambert said she was so happy the events turned out so well this year.

Redwood alumna Dani Anderson is now at Thousand Oaks high school. She returned to Redwood to tell students about her form of muscular dystrophy.

Anderson sat in a wheelchair, and smiling broadly, told the sixth grade about her hobbies. She’s an equestrian and almost has her black belt in Tae Kwon Do. A Thousand Oaks Youth Commission member, Anderson recently attended a Youth Leadership Forum for students with disabilities.

She drives. "They have a lot of technology for drivers with [disabilities]," she said, "From driving with a keyboard (to) pressing a button marked ‘stop.’" Students asked if she could write, and whether she was born with the disease. She answered "Yes" to both questions.

TOHS student Josh Reinis also told his story. He was born with a weak heart which has caused some paralysis, as he had a stroke at the age of 19 months old.

"People called me names," he said. "‘Penguin’ because of my arm and ‘Gimpy’ because of my limp. I just ignored them and they finally stopped." He said he has learned to swim and to ride, though he is prohibited from playing contact sports because of his heart.

TOHS student Adrianna Heragbe has level four brittle bone disease. She considers herself lucky to be able to dance, since most kids with the disease can’t even walk.

"You touch them and they break," she said. "I don’t really consider myself disabled."

She has undergone 10 surgeries, including replacing a rod which went from her hip to her knee, which then broke. If she falls, she has a 50/50 chance of breaking something or being paralyzed. She has broken more than 70 bones in her body, but she keeps on dancing.

Mark Chulack had a dirt bike accident in 1985 that left him with one arm fully paralyzed. He is a cabinet maker, and has loved his work since he first learned the craft in shop in high school.

"I’m using my feet, my shoulders to do different things, even at work." After a few years he decided to replace the arm, which could only hang by his side, with a working prosthesis. Chulack brought along his fly-fishing pole to demonstrate how his arm was designed with his fishing hobby in mind.

The hand opens and closes on a rechargeable lithium battery, and a microchip in his shoulder controls the fingers. Chulack joked that his hand is always good for recycling, since with its capacity to apply 30 lbs of pressure, he could crush an aluminum can.

He also challenged kids in the audience to race him at tying a shoelace with one hand, and at 14 seconds, no one in the room beat him.

Principal Mike Carpenter told the children that Abilities Awareness Week is one of the most valuable opportunities they will get. "You’ll better understand and accept those that are different," he said.

In conjunction with the activities, the school also held a weeklong pocket change drive for donations to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.